The United States and Israel initiated joint strikes across Iran with President Trump now advocating for regime change in the country. The strikes are largely reminiscent both in preparation, scale, and execution of Operation Desert Fox, a 1998 American bombing campaign in Iraq which claimed to prevent further proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by the Saddam regime. Desert Fox was the final series of military strikes against Iraq in the 90s, following nearly a decade of varying conflicts including Operation Desert Storm in 1991, strikes in 1993, and Operation Desert Strike in 1996.
In addition to kinetic strikes, the United Nations Security Council imposed economic sanctions against Iraq in the ‘90s; the U.N previously found that this led to the starvation of up to 500,000 children in the country, although studies since have found a lower total. American political and military leaders acted as though they could attack the small Middle Eastern country with impunity. For many years, this proved to be true, as Iraq was largely unable to compete with American military power. However, these strikes, sanctions, and conflicts throughout the 1990s fueled Islamic radicalism in the region and were directly cited by Osama bin Laden in his Letter to America. American intervention in the Middle East directly caused the rise of militant Islam, and was essential to both the attacks on 9/11 and the insurgencies in the years that followed.
Sadly, both the propaganda surrounding the strikes and the execution of the strikes themselves resemble an all too familiar playbook. Stopping Iran’s nuclear proliferation sounds much like the earlier claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Striking political and military leadership and calling for regime change is nearly identical to what we saw in the 1990s. And while those strikes appeared successful in the short term, they spawned movements that would drag the United States into multiple wars, causing thousands of American casualties and costing taxpayers trillions of dollars.
So, the question now is not whether or not the strikes are successful in the short term. The question now is “what comes next”? American bombing campaigns occurred during 1991, 1993, 1996, and 1998. I was born in 1993 and I deployed to Iraq. We may not see the consequences of these strikes immediately. But if history tells us anything, our children certainly will.
Patrick Samuels is a West Point graduate and former U.S. Special Forces officer. He is now the founder and CEO of Sunnyside Egg Co.
